How to Save Your Victor's Life In Six Easy Steps
by The Bitter Kitten
Summary: This is a little diversion from my main story, Rex et Regnum. It does spoil chapter 19 on, so do with that what you will. T for, well, Hunger Games.
1. Step 1: Introduce the Problem

I am going to murder Annek Alda. It will not be fast, and it will not be painless.

Perhaps I should back up.

I'm Meghan. Meghan Sweet, née Woodling. I mostly just go by Meghan. I married laterally, in case you're wondering. Not up or down, although I've been accused of both. I grew up in South Capitol, a stone's throw (no pun intended) from District Two. I was aces in school- graduated top of my class in Fashion Design at twenty-five, which is a year ahead of schedule. That same year, I married Felix (Sweet, obviously), and I started right out of the gate working as a stylist in the Hunger Games.

My designs have won -in order- Best New Stylist, Most Innovative Use of Materials, Most Original Use of Space, Best Storyline, the Pyrothique award for the synchronized fireworks, Highest Sponsorship, Best Pairing of Tribute and Theme, Best Interpretation of Theme, Second Highest Sponsorship, Best Representation of District. That last one was with Annek, the Victor from District Four in the Fifty-ninth Hunger Games. My Victor.

I've been a stylist for about a decade now. I've won an award for every year I've participated in the Hunger Games. How many Victors do I have? One. Just him; just Annek.

Awards aren't wins.

I learned that the first year, when Salina, a tart little sixteen-year-old from Five was a dark-horse front runner for sponsorships and high placement in the Fifty-first Games. I highlighted her self-described ability to hide in plain sight by making her blend in to her chariot. It looked completely empty, until she hit a button for the lights, and one by one, all of the other Tributes got a glowing red X projected across their faces. A few pulls and fabric adjustments, and her painstaking camouflage transformed into an interview-ready gown and a projected golden crown situated itself on top of her pretty little head. I was so proud of everything.

It is, however, a serious faux pas to mess with other Tributes during the Presentation, as I was told during the after-party for the stylists. And during the Games. And the awards pre-party. And by my seat-neighbor during. And at _that_ after-party. She got an axe straight through her neck in the first five minutes after the countdown. So imagine my surprise when my hubris and her death still got me the top honors for new stylists, and I had to stumble through an awful acceptance speech which somehow had to acknowledge that and still say what a promising sort of first impression it made.

Being a stylist is kind of like going to school for your MRS degree. Instead of attending classes in stilettos and pearls and that one red lipstick you think that guy who sits behind you likes, hoping he'll notice and fall madly in love with you and sweep you off to West Capitol to some mansion on the beach and a life of luxury, you try and make some District kid look impressive enough that people will pay money to help them survive and win a sadistic battle royale. If you succeed, you can sort of retire. Sort of, because some people like to collect as many Victors as they can, and those people are crazy.

You're still responsible for how your Victors handle the spotlight that comes after, what with press appearances, and parties, and interviews and what have you. Some blowhards hire teams of assistants to do this, so they can keep on "making legends" for themselves, but like I said, those people are crazy.

What they don't tell you is you get attached. Hard. Losing your Tribute is losing your own flesh-and-blood, grunted-him-out-of-my-belly child. I don't have any biological children. But I know what it feels like to bury your baby.

It doesn't seem like it should- not at first. You're faced with this grubby, underfed young thing that's scared mostly to death and you're supposed to make magic. Something that's screamingly original, on the bleeding edge of fashion, that will stun and amaze all the civilians, pry open the wallets of the people that matter, and keep you out of President Snow's eye. Yes, all at once. When it works, you get my Phoenix from Six in Fifty-Eight, and when it doesn't, you get the lumps of coal from Twelve that have always been and always will be. I'm pretty sure they just save time and reuse the costumes over there.

But it does. Salina really thought she would make it, and she'd talk to me about what she'd do with the winnings. I got to know her family, and her friends. Her crushes, her mortal enemies. I knew her. And she died.

It doesn't get any easier either, mind. But you're caught between a rock and a hard place, you see. Because you are the only one in your Tribute's corner. Ever. The civilians only want excruciatingly fashionable bloodshed. Cold-blooded killing that's devastating in a three-piece suit. Sponsors just want to get richer. They place bets on who'll finish in what place. There was a scandal a while back, where one of the people who handles distributing the actual items into the Arena was diverting funds to their own bet. Apparently, he was somehow three and a half million gold in debt, and he'd tried to double down. He disappeared. The party line is he committed suicide out of shame, but I'm sure he's an Avox in some mansion somewhere.

But who cares about the Tributes in the Capitol? Their stylists. We're more than that, actually, a mix of mentor and therapist and confidant and bosom friend and shopping buddy. Our job is to get them back home. And we fail at it. Annek is my only Tribute to survive, at all, let alone past the halfway point, and it was more dumb luck than any skill on his part. Quite a lot of work on my end, though.

It's been a hard few years for him. Adjustment periods and all. He's a good kid, he really is, and when he tries, you just want the world for him. Or I do. But he's impulsive about the stupidest things. I don't think he got enough sense slapped into him when he was young, because sometimes I want to shake him.

Which brings me back to killing him slowly. Obviously, I'm not actually going to poison him or whatever, but he's made me mad enough to seriously consider it.

I work for three months. Twelve weeks. Eighty-four days. I stake my personal reputation (see above) on vouching for his responsibility, I'm buried in meetings and exhausted, and I barely even get to say hi to Felix because my hours are so crazy, on top of everything else I do (which is a very lot), in order to get him a conference at his home. Not just any District. Not even just any Ward in his District. Hometown.

All he has to do -_all he has to do_\- is sit and answer stupid celebrity questions like "What have you been up to?" "Can you show off your skill?" "Will you sign my hat?" for sixty minutes. That's it. That's all. He was gonna be home for a week and a half, and the cherry on whipped-cream-covered top is he would finally get off probation and be able to travel more freely and, well, keep coming home. What does our boy do, with the chance to dramatically change his circumstances handed to him on a golden platter, wrapped in a bow, presented by a choir of singing angels and swimsuit models?

He bails.

He. Does not. Show up. I do, of course. I got there _early_, to provide a list of topics people can ask without getting censored. A few squirmier questions because people wouldn't buy it otherwise, but mostly the softest little lobs I can think up for him to answer. "Do you like the Capitol?" "Will you sign my shirt?"

He'd gone off with some girlfriend or whatever they're calling it now here. Doesn't bother to get in touch. Doesn't give me a heads-up so I can save face and reschedule. Leaves me holding the bag. I stumbled through some stupid story about food poisoning and rescheduling for later that year, but we all know what's happened, and it's the only thing I could do to get off-stage before I started crying tears of pure, distilled rage and fear and humiliation, and punching the coral-embossed hallway of the Depot. I have to explain this to President Snow himself, who will just get that smug look on his face like he was right all along and treat this as _treason_ on both of our parts. Why? He has his frilly little panties in a twist about Annek and the fact he killed the President's psychopath hunting buddy in self-defense. The man was a monster anyway and he only got what was coming to him. -That's off-record, of course, and I'll personally make sure you're an Avox before I die if you even _think _of saying that to anyone else or even just say it out loud in your empty living room. Trust and believe.

This is the worst possible outcome, besides standing up the President for a dinner date, or flipping him off on national television. Annek doesn't know it, but his life, and mine, and Felix's, and June's and Marcus' all have an expiry date on them now. Unless I work serious magic (and hours) to change the President's mind about everything.

This is why I'm going to murder my only Victor. Do you blame me?


	2. Step 2: Control the Damage

I'm settled in Annek's home in the Victor's Village, still seething and shaky. His sister is nice enough, filling me in on the girl he's gone off with. She's reserved, though, and it's easy to remember that she's District Four, and I'm from the Capitol. I just can't tell if she's cold because of that, or because she only knows me through her brother, and he's not exactly Man of the Year around here.

I have it out with Annek when he gets back, still giddy from the night. He's genuinely happy, even though he walks in alone. I know I should probably be relieved to see him like that, but the fact that he's so happy in the face of everything he's just brought down on us makes me furious. I grab his arm and we have it out, although I'm not exactly proud of it. He leaves to say goodbye and I head back to pack everything up. We meet at the train and he's not even speaking to me. At this point, I don't care. He's on the train and we're on our way. With no internet and no phones, there's nothing to be done for the whole ride back but sit on my hands and make different plans for the situation I'll find when we reach the City. At least it's only a few hours, but I'm lucky if I'm not crazy by the end of it. I wish I could get a message to Felix, Cinna, anyone, but it's not happening. I settle by a window and bite my nails, watching the darkness slide by the window.

As soon as our hovertrain touches down in the station at the heart of the Capitol, I drag Annek into the waiting car. Instead of literally anything else, he's decided to get piss drunk, the idiot. I tell the driver to head for the Tower, where all of the Victors live when they're in the Capitol, and pull out a little console to do some damage control. There's only internet access for people with clearance, and even for them, only within the City. It's already been three days since Annek bailed on the meet and greet. President Snow probably heard within the hour that he skipped out, so that's at least a day to either plan something awful or make arrangements for some deaths. I send a message to Snow's secretary, asking for a meeting. If I can get ahead of the avalanche heading our way, we might have Twelve's chance of winning the Hunger Games to make it out of this with our lives and our tongues.

Hello Hera,

Thanks again for the recommendation to Lignum. It was delicious and Felix's new favorite restaurant. Check your mailbox! By the way, I have an urgent issue to address with President Snow. Is he available at any time this week? I'm available mornings and nights, if that helps.

heart heart heart,

Meggie.

I click send. To be honest, I'm less than impressed with his secretary on a good day. She's an airhead, calls me "Meggie", and whoever gives her the biggest present gets priority with Snow. But she's the President's gatekeeper, and it's worth sucking up to her. Opening a new window, I order a truly enormous bouquet of purple gardenias and type in Hera's address from memory. Once it's confirmed, I close the console. The flowers will arrive tonight, and if she's in a good mood, she'll prioritize this meeting and work me in. Now, I just need to figure out what the hell I'm going to say. I look over to check on Annek, who's passed out beside me. He's a soggy mess and he's got a vicious-looking black eye, courtesy of who knows. I roll him over into the recovery position and make a note to disable the medication applet in the Dashboard in his apartments. If he wants to get black-out drunk and start fights, he's not going to run away from the hangover in the post.

First things first, though, I need to get him into the Tower without a bunch of paparazzi taking pictures of him in this state. They're usually staked out at all the main entrances, and bribing them not to take pictures just means you're paying them to sell their photos and a juicy little rumor besides.

Thank stars above no one was expecting him back for a few days, and so far we haven't encountered anyone, either at the train station or getting into the car. As we approach, I tap the driver on his shoulder and direct him to the service entrance. It's three blocks away and heads underground, inconspicuous and unknown to most people. I prepare a bribe for the driver. Seven hundred gold: enough to pay for fuel for three months, or a nice present for himself. Hopefully, enough to keep him quiet. I need Annek to be charming when he resurfaces, not an angry drunk. Which, I realize with a pang of guilt, he's well on his way to becoming if he's not there already.

Better that than morphling.

We head down the tunnel after I convince the driver I know where we're going, but I can't take chances and I make him drop us off at an intersection a block and a half from the service entrance. He looks skeptically at me trying to wrangle a six-foot-tall ragdoll, but I know what I'm doing and we make it there in about fifteen minutes.

The basements of the Tower always give me the creeps.

Like almost everything in Panem, there's the face you're supposed to see, and then the face that's been beat to shit.

Avoci are hapless people who have been deemed a threat to the Capitol, or even just a nuisance. Someone drags you off to a back room somewhere, there are sharp knives, and all of a sudden you're not even a person anymore. At least even the Districts are, well, the Districts.

We move through the silent throngs of people shoving laundry in industrial washers, scraping pristine food into garbage bins, gloving up to clean whatever remains of hedonism lie above. I don't look anyone in the eye, and no one looks at us. Down here, they don't wear the masks that hide the ruins of their faces: lipless mouths, hollow, sunken throats and cheeks, some with jagged scars crawling up to their ears. But it's not even that that sets my hair on end. It's that this is normal. Annek and I are the anomalies here. I want to throw up, I want to cry, I want to run away from them. We make it to a service elevator and I hit the button to get away from it all, breathing a little sigh as we pass the ground floor. I'm awful for it; I know. But I have more pressing things to worry about. Like making sure that's not going to be me and Felix in a few days.

As much as Annek is drunk and barely functional, his eye really does seem to be hurting him, and my resolve to let him ride out the hangover without meds starts to waver. When we get to his floor, I get him out of his traveling clothes and into bed. I start to send them down to be washed, but I stop. They're from his home, and probably the last fragment of District Four he'll have. I bundle them into my purse and settle on the bed, a hand on his shoulder.

"Annek, I need you sober by tomorrow. There's work to do in order to make this better. I'm still incredibly angry with you, but we're going to get out of this all right. I promise."

I mean it, I do. There is precious little I wouldn't do for this stupid, idiotic lunk who sometimes tries really hard.

He mumbles something, and I give in. I set painkillers and a hangover cure on the table near his bed, and head out.

I check my messages, hoping it's been enough time for Hera to get her stupid flowers and give me a meeting with Snow. My heart sinks when I open hers.

Hi Meggie!

I love love love these flowers, and it's great that lignum worked out so well for you! I have a million others to try, so get ready to take me out, lol!

I'm super, super sorry, but Prezzie is all booked up. I'm surprised you're even asking, knowing that the Hunger Games are gearing up and there's meetings with Gamemakers and planners, and don't even get me started on the Energy issue with Five and the Peacekeeper situation. II'm working you in, but it's not for a month out at 8, so you'll need to remember breakfast. I looooooove those little fried chicken in a biscuit things and maybe some fruit. Thanks again!

heartsies

Hera

The best a meeting a month out will do is see how good of a cautionary tale Annek makes.

I think of him in the next room, and I shake my head. Not good enough.

I double down, mentally hugging my wallet. I send her reservations to the hottest restaurant and show in the Capitol.

Hello Hera,

Gosh, that sounds busy! I guess it can wait until then, and I'll be sure to remember the biscuits ;) I have a reservation for four at Viridian and that new play this coming Tuesday. Do you think you'll be free?

heart,

Meggie.

I hang around, watching the fish swim in the covered pond at my feet. Annek doesn't stir; he's down for the count and seems to realize he's in a relatively safe place.

Finally, I hear a little ping.

MEGGIE OH MY STARS ABOVE THAT SOUNDS AMAZING

And I'll keep you penciled in if something opens up. Between you and me, Five will probably bail on the meeting, so be ready to go at 2 pm this coming Monday, k?

Lylas!

Hera

I let myself smile a little. It's still not the best, but it's better than before.

We at least have Twelve's chance.


End file.
